


Initial Peace Offering

by alethiometry



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 09:02:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethiometry/pseuds/alethiometry
Summary: Dinesh drinks a lot of beer. Gilfoyle makes himself right at home. It’s not a truce by any standards, except it kind of absolutely is. Probably.(Coda to 5.04)





	Initial Peace Offering

**Author's Note:**

> No show spoilers, but Gilfoyle does spoil the ending of Firewatch for Dinesh, because he's a dick.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been at all surprising that Gilfoyle followed them all the way to Battlebots, sidling into the seat on Jeff’s other side and extremely deliberately elbowing him square in the sternum as he offers Dinesh a brimming cup of cheap, watery beer. Some of it sloshes over the rim and splatters onto Dinesh’s shoes. Which just… kind of figures. If he’d thought he was off the hook just because Gilfoyle has joined him in fucking with Jeff at the office all week, well. He should know better by now. This is on him, really.

“How’s it hanging, _friends_?” Gilfoyle asks, every syllable dripping with contempt.

Dinesh eyes the cup suspiciously, a bit incredulous that Gilfoyle somehow seems to think it’s a good idea to ever give him alcohol again. On the other hand, the glare that Gilfoyle is shooting him reads something akin to _you owe me this_ , which, given recent revelations of his drunken transgressions, he can’t exactly argue with, so he takes the cup with a grimace and a muttered “fuck you, Jeff” for good measure.

They drink in silence, the three of them, watching the robots duke it out and munching on buffalo wings and celery sticks equally mechanically, and Dinesh takes solace in knowing that, however uncomfortable this is for him, it’s about ten times as uncomfortable for Jeff.

Probably.

It’s only when Jeff gets up to take a piss during intermission—reluctantly handing his phone over to a stony-faced Gilfoyle before he shuffles off—that Dinesh finally manages to unstick his throat and asks, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“What do you think?” Gilfoyle responds. They both stare ahead at the empty stage, avoiding each other’s eyes. “Getting drunk with him unsupervised a second time doesn’t seem like the wisest course of action, now, does it?”

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter, _Gilfoyle_.”

“Whatever you say, Dinesh.” Gilfoyle starts tapping absently at Jeff’s lock screen. “I just almost went to prison because you ran your mouth, is all. But that’s no big deal, no thanks to you. Know this fucker’s passcode, by any chance?”

Dinesh shakes his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Gilfoyle shrug and continue tapping out number combinations. He sips at his beer, for lack of anything better to do.

“What’re you gonna do if you actually crack his phone?” Dinesh finally asks when his beer cup is empty and there’s nothing left to distract himself with.

“The fuck’s it matter to you?” Gilfoyle looks up sharply. “You gonna rat me out again?”

Dinesh shakes his head with a sigh. “I don’t know what’s worse,” he says quietly. “The fact that you can and will hold this over me forever, or the fact that you know it was because I genuinely thought Jeff and I were best friends. And I tried telling myself that if the situation were reversed, you would have done the same thing, and stabbed _me_ in the back. But that’s not entirely true, is it? You wouldn’t have even gotten yourself into that situation in the first place.”

Gilfoyle opens his mouth to respond, but Jeff chooses that moment to amble back into their row, awkwardly shuffling past spectators who stand up to make room. Gilfoyle, for his part, doesn’t budge, just smirks as Jeff climbs unceremoniously over his legs, then tosses him his phone as he slumps back into his seat.

“Too many failed login attempts,” Jeff mutters, looking at his screen in dismay. “Try again in… twelve hours. Fuck.”

“Fuck you, Jeff,” Dinesh and Gilfoyle reply in unison, and for some inexplicable reason, that feels like the biggest win Dinesh has had all week.

 

———

 

They’re not back at Jeff’s apartment two minutes before Dinesh’s phone buzzes with a new text message.

> **Gilfoyle:** _I’m outside. Let me in._  
>  **Dinesh:** _fuck you_. _go home._  
>  **Gilfoyle:** _Let me in or I spill the beans to C.J. Cantwell about your COPPA violations. This is 100% up to you._ _  
> _**Gilfoyle:** _See?_ _  
> _**Gilfoyle:** _That’s what we call giving somebody agency over his fate._

“That’s called extortion, you fucking dick,” Dinesh snaps when he opens the door for Gilfoyle, who shoulder-checks him as he breezes past.

“Actually, it’s called me choosing not to make us even in the most destructive way possible. It’s called me being the bigger person and turning the other cheek. You’re welcome.”

“Careful.” Dinesh smirks. “You’re starting to sound like a Christian.”

Gilfoyle ignores the jab, opting instead to rummage through Jeff’s fridge and pantry. From the couch, Jeff looks like he’s about to protest, but then thinks better of it.

“I’m, uh, going to bed,” he declares, hauling himself to his feet.

He’s still locked out of his phone, and the rest of his electronics still have nails driven through them, so they let him go.

Gilfoyle emerges from the kitchen with a two six-packs of IPA and a bottle opener, cracking one open for himself as he stretches out where Jeff had been sitting just a second ago. He puts his feet up on the coffee table—or, rather, on top of Dinesh’s laptop, which is still nailed to the coffee table. After a moment’s hesitation, Dinesh sinks down beside him.

“So what’re you doing here?” he asks for the second time that night.

“Where else would I get free beer and the satisfaction of watching you choke on your guilt every time you open your mouth or so much as look at me?” Gilfoyle smirks. “Told you before, Dinesh: your suffering is my paradise. So I’m sure you can imagine, right now I’m feeling like a kid on Satanist Christmas. Why wouldn’t I try to draw this out for as long as I possibly can?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself—wait, Satanist Christmas? Don’t tell me that’s, like, actually a thing. Is a fat, hairy goatman going to sneak into your new apartment and leave dead babies in your fridge as a reward for being an edgy douchebag all year?”

Gilfoyle ignores him again and begins scrolling through Jeff’s PS4 library. “Your new bestie at least have good taste in games?”

Dinesh shrugs. “Usual stuff. Fallout, Uncharted, Mass Effect. Some indies. I’m in the middle of Firewatch, if you want to play.”

“FYI, all the ‘weird shit’ you encounter is just the old ranger fucking with you. Oh, and you never do get to meet Delilah.” Gilfoyle pauses in his search to take another swig of beer, ignoring Dinesh’s scowl, then selects Until Dawn. “Feel like getting some teens brutally murdered tonight?”

Dinesh shrugs and cracks open a bottle for himself. IPAs taste like shit, he thinks, and anyone who says they enjoy drinking them is either lying or a psychopath. But Until Dawn is an objectively fun game.

“Why the hell not,” he mutters, to no one in particular.

 

———

 

Dinesh doesn’t even realize he’s dozed off until Gilfoyle starts smacking him in the arm. Something about watching teenagers get sawn in half or impaled in the throat with rusty hooks is strangely soporific after a long evening of Battlebots and beer, but he decides not to dwell on that line of thought; he’s not Jared, for fuck’s sake.

“Fuck off,” he mumbles, and swats back at Gilfoyle. His head is throbbing lightly, as it always does when he’s at that stage where he’s technically not sober, but also a few drinks shy of being well and truly drunk.

“I’m ordering pizza,” Gilfoyle says. “Last chance to get anything before you’re stuck with ham and pineapple.”

“You’re the worst person I’ve ever met,” Dinesh tells him. Then, “Garlic knots, extra dipping sauce.”

 

———

 

“What would you have done?” Dinesh asks as he picks the pineapple and ham off his slice and coats it with red pepper flakes in a meager attempt to mask the residual flavor. Of all the qualities that make Gilfoyle a fucking asshole, his proclivity for Hawaiian pizza is by far the worst. “If you hadn’t found a way to blackmail Seppen into that deal. What would you have done?”

“Leave town,” Gilfoyle replies immediately. His mouth is full of pizza. Dinesh wrinkles his nose. “I only stopped by the house on a whim. If I hadn’t found anything, I would’ve left that same night. Probably California. Possibly the country.”

“That’s pretty lucky, then, that you and Jared found what you did.”

“Luck is a crutch invented by the weak and desperate to mask their failures,” Gilfoyle says, almost mechanically, like it’s some kind of mantra. It probably is. He punctuates that with a swig of beer, as if to drive the point home. Dinesh rolls his eyes.

“Emptying and dismantling an entire refrigerator on a whim seems pretty desperate to me.”

Gilfoyle actually chuckles. Almost. It’s hard to tell, because he’s polishing off the rest of his bottle as he possibly does it, but Dinesh can see the corners of his mouth twitch in a vaguely upward direction. Maybe.

Maybe, he reminds himself, is usually the best that he can get with Gilfoyle, even on occasions like this, when they binge junk food and beer and campy video games well into the night. What’s more surprising is that he had to remind himself of this at all—had to consciously remember this fact, because it’s only been two weeks since their living situation fragmented, but things have already started to unravel.

But then again, maybe it hasn’t.

It’s always a fucking maybe.

“What would you have done if Gavin Belson hadn’t taken Piperchat?” Gilfoyle asks a little later, when they’re both two beers tipsier, PS4 paused and long forgotten before them.

“I—” Dinesh begins, then hesitates. It’s not something he likes to think about, how close he’d flown to the sun. Makes him want to puke again. Or maybe it’s the pineapple-and-ham essence that’s been infused into his pizza, despite his futile attempts at neutralizing it.

Yeah. It’s just the pineapple and ham. Probably. Maybe.

“I have no fucking clue,” Dinesh finally says. “Leaving would certainly have been an option.”

“Lie. You’d never have the balls.”

“Well, maybe  _you’re_ the fucking coward, you dick. Running away from your problems and fuckups like a fucking child.”

“Except it wasn’t my fuckup,” Gilfoyle snaps. “It was yours.”

“I’m—”

“Don’t fucking patronize me by pretending you’re sorry.”

Dinesh scowls. “Then stop pretending you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad.”

“And I’m not sorry.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

“So—” Dinesh lets out a small belch. “Where does this leave us?”

Gilfoyle is quiet for so long that Dinesh thinks he’s maybe fallen asleep, which in itself is a bit surprising, as he’s usually the one who has to wake Dinesh up with a shake of the shoulder or—more likely—a smack upside the head, before they both haul ass to their respective bedrooms until the next Pied Piper-related emergency inevitably drags them both back into crisis mode, healthy sleeping hours be damned. But that was then.

“It leaves us at four A.M.,” Gilfoyle finally says, “splitting a pizza with toppings that I know for a fact you hate, playing teen-slasher horror games in somebody else’s apartment while systematically drinking our way through their decidedly not-scant supply of beer.”

Dinesh considers it for a moment while he drains his bottle. He still hates IPAs. This one is fine. Everything is starting to swim before his eyes, but not necessarily in a bad way. “I can live with that,” he concedes.

“Yeah,” Gilfoyle says. “So can I.”

“This isn’t a truce, by the way. And it doesn’t change anything.” He jabs the open neck of his empty bottle at Gilfoyle, a few last dregs of beer dripping onto his jeans. “You’re still a fucking asshole.”

“Yep.”

“I regret nothing.”

“Good.”

“I still hate you.”

Gilfoyle grins—actually, unambiguously, definitely grins. “I know.”

And maybe it’s because there’s not a single trace of  _maybe_ in his voice, maybe it’s because this is the most they’ve seen of each other in two weeks, maybe it’s because who even gives a shit at this point—Dinesh leans forward, and kisses him.

Gilfoyle tastes like hops and garlic and tomato sauce and pineapple and it should be disgusting but it’s… not. He’s intoxicating, in a way that Dinesh will no doubt be vehemently denying to himself later, but right now all he can focus on is Gilfoyle’s hand reaching up the base of his neck to draw him closer, his teeth nipping softly at Dinesh’s lower lip, the gentle scratching of his beard against Dinesh’s cheek, and Jesus  _fucking_ Christ, this is such a bad idea.

He pulls himself away just as quickly as he’d leaned in, heat rising rapidly up his neck where Gilfoyle’s hand had rested just a moment before, and he’d love to smack that languid, self-satisfied smirk from Gilfoyle’s face, if only his arms hadn’t suddenly decided to turn to jelly.

“Well, shit,” Gilfoyle murmurs. “You were right about being an utterly sincere drunk. I never pegged you as exceptionally self-aware, but I’m fully willing to acknowledge that, in this instance alone, I was mistaken.”

Dinesh says nothing—can’t formulate a single coherent thought that isn’t  _what the fuck_ or _holy shit_. His head feels like one of those tanks with the giant industrial fans that blow dollar bills around and you only have so much time to catch and keep as many as you can, but of course it’s harder than it looks and maybe probably definitely rigged anyway and he’s grasping and grasping for something—anything—and keeps coming up empty and—

“I’m not that drunk,” is what he finally manages to say.

Gilfoyle raises an eyebrow. “Well, shit,” he repeats. Dinesh watches dumbly as he rises to his feet. “Take as long as you damn well please, I suppose, to acclimate yourself to whatever the fuck it is you’ve been repressing this whole time. I’m going to sleep.”

“You’re going—”

“To sleep.” Gilfoyle rolls his eyes. “Shut-eye. A nap. Catching Z’s. Join me, or don’t. I couldn’t care less.” And with that, he makes a beeline for Dinesh’s room. He leaves the door open.

Okay, Dinesh thinks. Okay. What the fuck. Okay. Maybe if he thinks this through one step at a time, his brain won’t completely fucking melt, the way it’s already started doing, because, seriously? What the fuck.

Okay.

The facts at hand are:

  * It’s four in the fucking morning.
  * He kissed Gilfoyle. It was enjoyed by both parties.
  * He’s not drunk enough to use that as an excuse, and Gilfoyle knows it.
  * Gilfoyle is currently in his bed, either asleep or about to be.
  * He should probably get some sleep, too.



Which is all well and—not _good_ , per se. But not bad, either. It just… _is_. So he moves on from the facts, and begins to map out potentialities.

Cons of getting into bed, knowing full well that Gilfoyle is there:

  * It’s weird.
  * It’s Gilfoyle.



Pros of getting into bed, knowing full well that Gilfoyle is there:

  * He’s tired.
  * Proves to Gilfoyle that he’s not as repressed or whatever-the-fuck as Gilfoyle thinks he is.



“Fuck.” Dinesh lets out a single, beleaguered exhale. He heads to his room, closing the door behind him.

Gilfoyle’s glasses are folded neatly on his nightstand, and he shifts slightly as Dinesh lays down beside him. Close—very close—but not touching. Not yet. The corners of his mouth twitch upwards in maybe-amusement. “Took you long enough.”

Dinesh frowns. “It’s been like two minutes.”

“It’s been two years,” Gilfoyle says quietly.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

But Gilfoyle says nothing, because he’s already fucking asleep. Or pretending to be.

Fucking asshole.

“Fuck you, Gilfoyle,” Dinesh mutters, tugging at his comforter and shutting his eyes.


End file.
